Seljeantemensalet

Abstract

Summary The point of departure for this little study is the new edition of the large work by Poul Nörlund (1888–1951), Gyldne Altere. Jysk Metalkunst fra Valdemartiden (Golden Altars, Jutlandish Metal Art of the Valdemar Period), first published in Copenhagen in 1926, and re‐edited by Tage E. Christiansen, Aarhus, 1968. This new edition comprises an appendix with discoveries and new literature on the subject which have appeared in the forty years since the work was first published. The aim of the present paper is to present a concise survey of all that is known today on medieval Norwegian gilded metal altars and reliquaries. In contrast to the copiously preserved material from Danish metal altars of the period 1100–1250, Norway's material is limited to one extant piece, the Selje antependium. It arrived at the Bergen Museum (now the Historical Museum in Bergen) in the last century, nailed to a Renaissance cupboard. There is even disagreement as to whether the present reconstruction is the right one. Moreover, there are only a few written references to lost Norwegian metal altars. In addition there is a total of four reliquaries which are still intact, and fragments of two more. Most of these reliquaries were made in Bergen on Norway's west coast, where a central goldsmith workshop is known to have existed. There is, moreover, a reliquary of provincial type which comes from Valdres in inland Norway, and there are two Icelandic reliquaries which must have been made on that island. When Nörlund's book first appeared, Thor Kielland's work was being printed or had just been printed, and Harry Fett's observations had long been published. It was therefore not possible for these scholars to make use of Nörlund's book or the results of his studies for comparisons with the Norwegian material. The present paper, thus, is a modest attempt to do just that. In all probability the Selje antependium was made in Bergen, as was the majority of the reliquaries. There is nothing known about the monastery workshop on Selje which Kielland postulates, and it would seem to be purely hypothetical. Kielland's reconstruction of the antependium however, appears plausible, especially his contention that the lower row of figures originally belonged to a retable and not to the antependium itself. Of the Bergen reliquaries the oldest would seem to be the Fortun shrine (Fig. 6) and the shrines from Vatnås in Sigdal (Fig. 4), plus the Thomas shrine (Fig. 5), all of which can be dated to the period 1200–1250. The Heddal shrine (Fig. 8) is one of the youngest of these reliquaries, and should be placed in the period 1275–1300, or possibly post 1300. In the oldest reliquairies, as in the Selje antependium, we find that the figures with their clean‐shaven faces and the characteristic gestures of their hands, are in the Byzantine style. In the Vatnås shrine and the shrine from St. Thomas church on Filefjell the draperies are nonetheless early Gothic. The small, round reliefs from St. Thomas church display an Antique‐Byzantine character. Two of them represent the Millenium as an Hellenistic idyll, while the third medallion has a purely Christian motif, a “lion attacking a deer,” symbolizing the devil's assault on the pious (Fig. 5). This motif can be compared to a relief from one of Oslo's early churches, now walled into the base of the tower of Our Saviour's church in Oslo, showing a “lion attacking a man.” The present paper discusses at several places the vine‐like ornament of Norwegian reliquaries, and considers its relationship to the abundant ornament material now made available in Nörlund'se work. This was not possible at the time when the Norwegian reliquaries were first published. Then follows a description of the antependium from Komnes church in Sandsvær, in Norway's Buskerud county, which is thought to be an imitation in wood of a metal altar. (Parallels are also known in Denmark.) In this connection, the possibility that the Lyngsjö altar‐front may have been made in Lund, where Italian artists were active, is also discussed. Certain Danish wooden antependia appearing in Nörlund's book and in Christiansen's Appendix to it, are also mentioned here. By way of conclusion the topographical placing of the Komnes antependium is discussed. The original name of both the church site and the farmstead was Kaupmannsnes (1360) and Kaupmannanes (mentioned in 1399). The location of the farmstead and an old document indicate that there was a local marketplace here, which German and Netherlandish merchants occasionally visited in the 1300's. This antependium with its carved apostle figures which imitate figures in copper, may possibly be a result of Danish‐Norwegian cultural relations, but of this we have no certainty.